Origin Story
In the beginning the world was a formless void filled with chaos and energy. In the early days beings began to form in the chaos, given birth by the boundless and eternal shiftings of the void. These beings were defined by their creation, either tending towards their chaotic origins, or becoming beings of pure energies. The first names were crafted in the nameless void and these beings became Primordials and Gods. ' ' Primordials and gods battled each other, for it was their nature to seek to shape the formlessness around them, but how it should be shaped was a matter of great dispute. So for a countless age of nameless creation and destruction the elder beings clashed again and again, until slowly, violently, a world began to take shape. Where there was once only swirling night there became heaving oceans. In the valleys between nothingness and nowhere great mountains thrust to the heavens. ' ' As the world formed it split the void and each elder being chose a home that best suited their attunement. From the great clouds of energies the gods forged a realm of Celestial magics that they could call home. Deep below the cracked and molten surface the primordials built a land of wind and fire, water and stone. In the nameless places where the void still lingered some fallen elders hid and plotted, and they became the first devils and demons. ' ' Our true story begins with an epic battle of the creation war between two of the Elders. Gods, one of purest light, and one shaped from the very essence of shadow, Bahamut and Tiamat. In a battle as ancient as the world, good vs. evil, they raged back and forth across their speck of infinity. Where they clawed each other’s hide mountains of blue and red erupted from the earth. Where they seared each other with fire, life was swept away leaving great deserts of gold and green. Where they stampeded immense forests sprang from the churned soil. ' ' On and on the battle raged while around them other elder beings tired and settled, giving birth to new life and the ancient races of the world. Finally Bahamut knew there could be no other answer. To rid the planes of Tiamat he would have to sacrifice himself, and even then it would be only a half measure, for Tiamat was dark and terrible as the night and not so easily slane. ' ' So on the ten thousandth day of the ten thousandth battle Bahamut made a mighty roar, so loud it shook the very fabric of creation and was heard across the planes. The roar was so great it shattered Bahamut into a thousand stars of light leaving only his vast skeleton, and Tiamat was rent apart, each of her beastly dragon heads becoming a dragon god in their own right, and her own godly essence chained into the body of a lesser deity. ' ' Tiamat was no more, but the still young goddess seethed with rage and the terrible genius of the void and she vowed she would make herself whole again. She took the name Takhisis, meaning shadow weaver in the primordial tongue, and set about binding the six pieces of herself together again, but it was not so simple. ' ' Takhisis thought Bahamut dead, but he was bright and brilliant as a new dawn and was not so easily slane. His stars became dragons, brilliant to behold in all shades of the metals of the earth, and they swarmed upon the land, battling against Takhisis and her broods. Then the mind of Bahamut hid itself deep in the celestial plane to watch and wait, for in his roar their had been chaos, but also reason, a prophecy laid into the very weaving of reality that foretold Tiamat’s true and final defeat at the hands of mortal heroes. ' ' The mind that had once belonged to Bahamut knew that preparations would need to be made, and slowly and gently as the oceans against a stone, he would shape the world. So he fashioned for himself a new body that he might return to the material plane and took a new name. A celestial name meaning “Light and Reason”, he called himself Rao. And so Takhisis plotted her resurrection, and Rao moved against her as slow and sure as the turning of the wheel of time.